PeterRS

Years ago there were pleas that at least one extra car be added to the Skytrain and MRT. There is plenty of room on the platforms for at least 2 or 3 more. Yet even though many additional stations have since been added and yet more are about to come on line, there are still no extra cars. Once the tourists return, travelling at any time of day will feel like the sardines on Japan's commuter system.

We should be very thankful that he took on all the tasks of keeping gaythailand going and ensuring it was the most active and varied of the various Thai chat rooms. It is inevitably part of the job that the owner of a site will occasionally receive some flak from time to time. With his passing, our gratitude along with Michael's comments is surely all that needs be said.

This seems another typically ill thought through policy by administrators who have little clue about insurance. What about those who are fully insured with travel policies or home insurance policies with worldwide cover? Or farang who live here and already have local cover? As z909 points out, 34 baht per person is peanuts. It certainly does not cover even one doctor's visit in a public hospital. When tourism gets back to the 30 million plus level, I assume - although that is always a dangerous thought process in Thailand - this is for those not covered by their own policies. We know from newspaper reports about a year or so ago that tourists' unpaid medical bills accounted for quite a substantial sum. A lump sum of 1 billion baht in a tourist medical account would probably go a long way to cover these. Then there is the matter of how this 300 baht will be paid. Will every tourist be expected to bring $10 in cash? I doubt if that amount in Brazilian real will find much favour. Having to queue to pay it at a special counter prior to Immigration will just add to the existing chaos of getting into the country.

That's a lovely story but I expect it is more fanciful than reality. I remember seeing that movie on television some time in the 1980s. It featured a number of the great older generation of British character actors like James Robertson Justice, Gordon Jackson, Duncan Macrae and the husky voiced Joan Greenwood.

Gogo gone?

I realise that everyone will have different likes, but shouldn't Taipei be included, given that Taiwan was the first Asian country to legalise gay marriage? St. Petersburg also is fascinating for the traveller as well as being an easy city for reaching Helsinki by fast train and Estonia

I assume that some of the new readers will be wanting to consider Thailand as a destination, assuming life does get back to normal and prices are not too much higher. If the new readership is primarily US based (my guess), since the trip to Asia is a major expense I expect some might wish to take in another country. My view would therefore be to look firstly at one neighbouring country and then at the hub airports where there will be plane changes and perhaps the opportunity of a few days stop over. As z909 points out, Phnom Penh/Siem Reap seems the obvious neighbour since it combines a flourishing gay scene with a bit of culture. Telling relatives and friends that the aim of the long trip is to see Angkor Wat rather than the fleshpots of Pattaya might go down well! back home For hubs Tokyo, Beijing and Taipei are the first that come to mind. Tokyo should not be difficult to write about since the gay area is basically focused in the Shinjuku Ni-chome area and a mention of the various host boy bars (great pics). Taipei should also not be difficult and there is always the hook of the huge Gay Pride Parades there at the end of October each year (more great pics) plus an increasing number of gay venues. Not sure about Beijing but have heard about Destination as being one of the gayest clubs in the region. https://www.tripsavvy.com/destination-gay-bar-beijing-1417633 A lot of original pics of three of the cities have been posted here by members. I am sure they would grant approval for use on the new site to avoid the need for yet more expense. I have some I will happily donate - although they may not be completely up to date.

No twitter, no facebook, no instagram, no youtube, residents near Mar a Lago fighting to prevent him from living there after next week, no PGA golf major at his Bedminster golf course, no British Open golf even considered for this Ayrshire course, Deutsche Bank finally pulling the plug as the Trump organisations's last banker in the USA (although Russian and Chinese banks are probably lining up), Forbes magazine warning all former Trumpers it will automatically assume what they say in their new employment is a lie, Giuliani facing disbarment, a host of major corporations halting donations to Republican campaigns . . . The future for Trump must seem a great deal less rosy than it did 5 years ago. One thing he might look forward to, though. The sun shining through the bars of his cell as he spends the rest of his life in jail!

I have accounts with three banks in three countries. I have used internet banking for some years. Now all three are pushing me to switch to their phone apps.

i had no idea that the Cities section was all Michael's work. Congratulations, because some are a fascinating read. I thought most cities had probably just been moved over from the boytoy site. As z909 rightly points out, just describing the experience of visiting a new city is ambitious. Adding in the gay venues is even more so. I wonder if there could be a small panel of readers in the four listed Thai cities who could help by feeding in updated information from time to time.

News today that one of New Zealand's Central Bank data systems has been hacked. Sensitive personal and commercial information may have been affected. No doubt there will be more and more major organisations around the world hacked. It seems to have been going on for at leats a decade and it doesn't matter how big the company is. Nearly 1 billion accounts at Facebook hacked. 200 million Instagram accounts. 500 million at Marriott Hotels, 500 million at Yahoo, 510,000 at Citigroup - and the list goes on. According to wikipedia, in 2019 a collection of 2.7 billion identity records including 774 unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords was posted for sale on the internet! I do not know if it helps but I refuse to do any telephone banking. Yet almost all banks are pushing clients to change to this form of banking. And many banks have themselves been hacked! https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/zealand-central-bank-data-system-hacked-75160221

I have never been a Schwarzeneggar fan. Certainly not as a politician. Even as an actor there seemed something slightly fake about him. Maybe it was the accent, I just don't know. But he has uploaded a speech on the internet about the riot in Washington last week. I admire him for making it and I admire him more for what he says. Do watch it.

I can assure you the concern is no longer underage sex. The elites loathe the idea that the country is still called the sex capital of Asia and they want rid of it. This is not new. I believe it was started by the first Thaksin regime 20 years ago with the Social Order campaigns. Poll after poll found these were very popular in both the cities and the countryside. As you suggest, what rich Thai guy wants quizzical looks when he is shopping in Paris or New York? The irony is that behind closed doors the Thais are as randy as everyone everywhere and have opportunities for sexual adventures that are probably more adventurous than those available for foreigners.. They just object very strongly to the label.

Perhaps I can make a positive suggestion to counter the negative ones made earlier. Rather than each city/destination having separate sub links for Gay Bars, Gay Massage, Gay Clubs, Gay Hotels, Gay Restaurants and Gay Saunas, could not the main establishments be incorporated into the text of the city descriptions? In Bangkok I suspect most visitors would be happy enough to learn about Telephone and Soi 4; Arena, Prince and Senso; DJ Station; a handful of gay friendly hotels and restaurants at different price ranges; and Babylon, Chakran and Sauna Mania (with caveats about Chakran being more Asian for Asian and Sauna Mania's price discrimination). It would at least give readers places to start as they explore gay Bangkok. That would obviously be less comprehensive but would avoid the need for constant updating. Special events like Maggie Choo's Sunday gay days could also be incorporated. I also think it would be useful to have a small section about genuine gay guides for each city. Over on the sawatdee site Moses advertises his Siam Roads guides located in many Asian cities. Judging from the comments of those who have hired the guides, these good looking young guys provide an excellent service in showing visitors their cities and nightlife.

With new members joining and some possibly looking at vacations in Thailand and maybe other parts of Asia, I took a look at the layout of this site. I believe we were told the sections other than the chat room forums would be upgraded. Having now looked at it, I must say it looks great. The designer has done an excellent job and everything is well laid out. I wish I could say the same about the content. I realise this is no doubt a work in progress. But there are some major errors and omissions. First in the list of Thai cities. These are the obvious ones, Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket and Chiang Mai. Unfortunately there are definitely some copyright photos of boys in those sections. Surely these have to be removed in line with the Board's new policies? Second there is a lot of incorrect information. These are some. In Chiang Mai only one bar is mentioned other than the gogo bars and the two saunas. This is Yokka Dok. But that bar closed between 3 and 5 years ago. No mention of the other bars which have relocated to Charoen Prathet Soi 6. In Phuket for hotels it highlights the Royal Thai Yacht Club Hotel on Nai Harn Beach. That hotel has not been known by that name for at least ten years. It became a Mandarin Oriental before changing again. It is now known as the Nai Harn Resort Hotel. In Pattaya it suggests spending afternoons at the gay beach where at around 4:00pm the boys will come out to frolic and play volleyball etc. I don't know how long ago it was since the beach stopped being a magnet for a clutch of cute young Thai guys in the late afternoons. It also suggests a Sunee Plaza that is more like the thriving area it was some years ago than one now in its death throes. As for Bangkok, under the Bars section the first is Maggie Choo's. I wonder why. This is not a gay bar. It is gay on Sundays but if gay visitors went on a Friday evening they would be sorely disappointed. Then in Soi 4 it lists Telephone Bar but Balcony is nowhere to be found. DJ Station is listed as a bar. Maggie Choo's is also listed a s a Club!! Only one sauna is listed - Babylon. There are 9 centrally located massage spas but no V Club 7 (part of Chakran sauna) and quite a few others. I can remember the days when there were several monthly gay publications available at many of the gay venues. One complaint was that their listings and maps were always incorrect for one or more reason. I cannot imagine how anyone can compile and keep up to date any gay listings. But if there are going to be listings, surely they have to be reasonably up to date and not years out of date. My view is that this task has to be delegated to one person who perhaps has to be paid to do all the regular checking. Third concerns the list of cities. Most will be of interest to those travelling to Europe and the Americas (although the inclusion of Moscow in a gay guide may be questionable). In Asia, apart from the Thai cities I have mentioned, only Hong Kong is listed. That has no information whatsoever about any gay establishments. It merely mentions two gay beaches, without adding that it requires an hour and a half at least to get to the main one as it is located far from anywhere on Lantau Island. For dining it includes only Lan Kwai Fong which is now one of the most expensive dining options in the city. Nearby less expensive SoHo has been more popular for about 20 years. What about all the bars and saunas? Then why is there a listing for Melbourne but not the gayer and much more visited Sydney? If any Gay Guide is to be accepted as a serious guide to Asia, surely it must also include at least Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Taipei and Singapore, with perhaps one section on the entirety of mainland China. As it stands, there are at least a couple of other gay Asia destination guides on the internet that have a great deal more information and up to date information. Sorry, I know this is not going to be a popular post!

I take your point about one bar and one boy. But has not the primary attraction of gay Thailand traditionally been the fascinating buffet it offered? It was the volume of gogo bars, of great massage spas with willing Thai guys and of saunas that welcomed all and sundry. That buffet has been whittled away to a fraction of what it used to be. Even the lovely Thai guys are being replaced rapidly with those from nearby countries. i really wonder how many gay tourists in the years to come will be happy with one boy from one bar. You are right about governments. For years the Thai government and the elites who keep it in power have been doing their best to get rid of the international publicity that labelled Thailand the sex capital of Asia. I cannot see this changing.

Totally agree, but I am sure Michael has considered this. For readers of this chat room it will be a great shame if Thailand and other Asian countries are covered only in one forum rather than a series of separate sub forums. As the Board owner, Michael clearly must do as he pleases. I only highlight this point for two reasons. I am staggered that there is only one forum for the whole of Europe. Do you mean only one forum in English? Surely there will be forums in each country in their own languages. That's true in Asia. The second is what I suppose my long thread was all about in the first place. Given the reduction in the number of forums and the overall number of posters, in addition to the number of other sites now on the internet with information for gay men about many countries and the increasing prevalence of the apps, for how long will there be a place for chat rooms like this? As with the gay scene in general in Thailand, might its days be numbered?

I have made a post on the "GayThailand is now GayGuides.com" thread which should have been made here. Apologies. Purely for ease of reading, I repost here. I hope the moderator can delete the same one on the other thread. Thank you. There have been comments on the forum that there are now fewer posts here to keep members interested. The absence of trip reports (for obvious reasons) and the withdrawal of the photos thread (also for reasons which to many are logical) are two that have been expressed. I am sure there are more. We live in horribly difficult times and the chances that they will return to anything like normal are very uncertain. Even if they do, though, in gay Thailand we will not just be in a new normal we will be in the new normal that has been creeping up on us with increasing rapidity for well over a decade. Some will say that should be two decades pointing to the huge difference in the gay scene before the millennium compared to just a year ago. As most of us know and acknowledge the gay scene in some key cities in Thailand is dying. In my view it is unlikely to be revived. The scene in Phuket is near death. The scene in Chiang Mai has seen a huge number of closures in recent years. There is little left. In Pattaya Sunee Plaza and Boyztown are a desperate shadow of what they once were and may never recover. Jomtien seems alive and well but without any gay gogo bars and a dwindling number of Thai boys in favour of boys from neighbouring countries. Even the numbers who contribute to this forum has dropped over the years from a regular posting membership of 40, 50 or more to - how many now? A dozen or so? The numbers of gay western and Australasian tourists has been going down for years. Those who do visit are ageing faster than they can be replaced by younger guys. I suspect airfares may be at promotional rates once international flights restart. But those rates absolutely have to rise significantly after that short initial period. The airlines have unbelievable debts and these have to be repaid. Many gay venues will die without the Chinese who will surely come in ever increasing numbers in the new normal. They will still be joined by other short haul north east and south east Asians. But their interests have always seemed more in massage spas and the Asian for Asian saunas. The outlook for gogo bars seems bleak. None of the above has not been expressed before, both here and elsewhere. The point of raising it again concerns the direction of this forum. I can understand that commercial reasons may have prompted the amalgamation. Until this morning I had never visited the boytoy site but I believe the vast majority of its membership is in the USA. What i find strange is that its home page has nothing about threads on Europe, South and Central America. All I see is a section on General Chat and another on Far Far Away. The latter has only two sub threads - Gay Asia and Gay Africa. Gay Asia threads are already mostly about Thailand - and incidentally contain one that has a post that would certainly contravene the lese majeste act. I hope threads on the boytoy site are gone through with a fine tooth comb before the merger or we might find this site disappears altogether. Reading more posts, I note one poster querying the disappearance of the sections on Europe, Central and South America. I wonder why since this was to be a key factor in the merger. But the first post I read from I presume the owner/moderator states "the site is slow at times". I look further down and see a post "This small horny community ..." Yet more posts vigorously lament the taking down of the porn threads. One suggests that the boytoy site will merely become one for those interested in overseas travel. I had no idea boytoy was a small site. What all this preamble leads up to is this. As I read it (maybe incorrectly), there are two sites with dwindling memberships joining forces. One is based in the USA (I think). I expect many of its posters do vacation in the sex districts in Central and South America. Given the much higher cost of travelling to Asia, how many will actually even consider making the trip, I wonder? They may read the forums here but will they fill the gap in the dwindling gay western tourism numbers? Something tells me the answer is no. Then once the sites are merged, if that happens in the near future, all the new readers will be able to see are the doom and gloom threads here about the dwindling sex scene in Thailand (sorry, I know this post will not help). And all the closures. And the Chinese taking over. Is that going to be much incentive to travel here or even read about Thailand? I don't really want answers to my questions. I merely want to raise them, possibly for discussion. Please shoot me down.

What a fickle fable! An official request goes to the UAE and no reply is received? Who on this good earth actually believes that? As for the Red Notice, Interpol's own website states there are currently 62,000 valid Red Notices of which only 7,484 have been made public. So what the Thai Police are moaning about makes about as much sense as their stated intention all those years ago that this murderer would be brought to justice. Being the heir to one of the richest fortunes in the Kingdom, the police in Thailand will no doubt be receiving plenty of well stuffed envelopes to ensure he is never discovered.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Neil Sheehan has died at the age of 84. He is perhaps best known for having told the story of The Pentagon Papers for The New York Times. These revealed the highly secret US history of decision making in the dreadful Vietnam War. They illustrated the decisions and strategies adopted by successive US administrations which substantially increased the war effort even as their own serious doubts about the possibility of success rapidly diminished. There is an utterly fascinating long article in The New York Times about the cloak and dagger story of how he obtained the Papers. He revealed all in a 4-hour 2015 interview which was embargoed until after his death. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/now-it-can-be-told-how-neil-sheehan-got-the-pentagon-papers.html The NYT has a firewall, but by using google and his name you can access it. As a war correspondent in the early days of the Vietnam War, he was fascinated by this first war where "people were dying for nothing". This led him to investigate the War in far greater detail. The result was "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam". This took him 15 years to write and won him the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. He decided to write about the war focussing on one charismatic lieutenant colonel. Vann was very confident the war could be won. Former Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience in 2017 that he never understood the country's anger against the war until he read "A Bright Sining Lie" which showed him that all up the chain of command "people were just putting in gobbledygook information, and lives were being lost based on those lies and those distortions." But Kerry was a bit late. He should have read former Secretary of Defence Bob McNamara's mea culpa in his 1995 book "in Retrospect" where he writes, "We in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong." "A Bright Shining Lie" is a wonderfully written expose that should serve as a lesson for future governments considering war to obtain its goals.

Can any of us forget when we watched our first episode of the TV series "Queer as Folk"? It didn't matter if it was the UK original series or the US series. I can remember sitting in the living room of a friend in England's Lake District. We'd both been out to the pub and were a little drunk. Then he said I had to see the first episode he'd recorded. So well after midnight with yet more beer I watched in disbelief that this series about gay men, including one very young, with an extremely graphic visualisation of gay sex had been shown on British terrestrial television. I later bought vdo of the two series. Then later in Bangkok I found the American series in a vdo store in MBK. The creator of the series, Russell T. Davies, is one of Britain's most acclaimed gay screenwriters. Even he was surprised at the show's success. But did you ever think about something? The acronyms HIV and AIDS are never uttered once in the series even though a character with HIV appears briefly. Davies finally came to the realisation that he could no longer avoid writing about HIV and the pandemic which started as he was starting his sexual life. Many of his friends and lovers who died in the 1980s were said to have died of pneumonia or cancer. AIDS was rarely mentioned. Even today stigma still exists, often fuelled by ignorance and fear. "It's A Sin" is Davies' new TV series which has AIDS at the centre of the drama. It will be aired in the UK on Channel 4 in late January. Hopefully it may soon become available on youtube or other channels. There is an excellent article about Davies and his life in today's Guardian. It starts like this - https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/03/russell-t-davies-i-looked-away-for-years-finally-i-have-put-aids-at-the-centre-of-a-drama

From the above I assume the Club area could include the type of photos that I and others have been posting. But I will wait to see the new rules.

Pesonally I dread the thought of having to wade through pics of western guys in order to get a few of cute Asians . Assuming photos meet the criteria, can there be two - one Asian, one western? Or even a third if there are those interested in, say, guys from the indian sub-continent? How is anyone supposed to know if photos uploaded to the internet are in copyright or not? E.g. many of the photos I have uploaded originate from a Taiwanese company with many different photo sites including BlueMen, Bliuephoto and Whosemen. It posts some of the photos on its own sites as teasers. The others have come mostly from another different site. I have seen many photo sites headed by a note that if any photographs are in copyright, the owner just needs to notify the gay website owner and the photos will be taken down. Is that not sufficient? Your comments re regulations for photos threads seems similar to this present site. But when you say that no nudity will be allowed and no "ass shots", does that mean photos of a bare ass (but not specific detail) are now out?

I agree 99% with williewillie. But it is perfectly clear the Thai government dropped the ball big time with all the foreign and illegal workers at the fish market. After the April lockdown and the gradual easing, did absolutely no one look at what happened in Singapore with migrant workers? I find this impossible to believe, given that numbers of infections are reported daily. After Singapore was thought to have effectively controlled the number of infections, in May an explosion of infections was discovered amongst migrant workers. Treated very much like fifth class citizens, these workers mostly from India and Bangladesh receive minimum wages, live in packed dormitories one on top of the other and are taken to and from work in packed buses. As the government had previously been warned, they were a huge cluster waiting to happen. Then happen it did. 157,000 testing positive out of a workforce of around 300,000. It is not as though successive governments have been ignorant about the number of migrant workers at the Samui Sakhon fish market and the fishing industry in general. For decades each government has said it would do something to stop the illegal practices and clean up all the corruption. Each government has done precisely nothing. Once again endemic corruption rules the day. By turning a blind eye to the possibility of a major cluster, the government has seen its hopes of slowly opening up the country collapse. Yes, it did an extremely good job. But how good is good if all that good work is undone because it failed to do what Taiwan has done - impose massive fines on those who break the rules? In my view the excuse that TIT is more than pathetic when it puts lives and whole industries at risk.

Talk about utter stupidity. Taiwan had gone 253 days without any local covid19 infection. That changed when a New Zealand pilot flying for EVA idiotically broke the rules by not maintaining the mandatory home quarantine for just three days after returning from a flight. After one flight he failed to quarantine and consorted with a woman and visited some shops. Probably infected earlier in the month, he was found to be coughing on a flight from the USA back to Taipei and was not wearing a mask. In Taipei he had infected at least one woman and two other pilots. 170 people who had been in contact with the woman are now in quarantine and being monitored. The two shops known to have been visited by the pilot and the woman have been disinfected and further tracing of possible customers is taking place. If Thailand had such severe penalties, would any of those employing immigrants and illegal immigrants at the fish market have dared do so?